You can now run Oracle Standard Edition Two as a License Included offering on Amazon RDS and can also upgrade existing Standard Edition (SE) and Standard Edition One (SE1) instances in database version 12.1.0.1 to Standard Edition Two (SE2) using either the AWS Management Console or API.

In the License Included service model, you do not need separately purchased Oracle Standard Edition Two licenses. License Included pricing is inclusive of software license, underlying hardware resources, and Amazon RDS management capabilities. This allows you to pay for the hours you use and change your instance type as needed to fit your workloads. The new License Included offering is in addition to the Bring Your Own License offering for Oracle Standard Edition Two already available on Amazon RDS.

The Amazon RDS for Standard Edition Two is available in database versions higher than "12.1.0.2.v2" and offers a number of features including High Availability using Multi-AZ, database storage sizes up to 6TB, storage performance with up to 30,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS), and storage encryption using keys you manage through AWS Key Management Service.

To upgrade an existing 12.1.0.1 Standard Edition (SE) and Standard Edition One (SE1) database instance, use the "Modify" option in the AWS Management Console or use the "ModifyDBInstance" API. Before you upgrade a production database instance, we recommend that you test the upgrade process with a test DB instance to verify the duration of the upgrade process as well as test your application with the new DB engine version.

To create a new Amazon RDS for Oracle Standard Edition Two instance with just a few clicks, use the "Launch DB Instance" wizard in the AWS Management Console and select Oracle Standard Edition Two and License Included options. Learn more by visiting the Amazon RDS Pricing page.